We left home at 0900 and picked M up on the way. We are flying KLM, with the first leg from Edmonton to Calgary operated by West Jet. The check in process seemed to take a fair amount of time but M and I ended up on the last two seats together so, worth the wait.
Our plane was delayed (imagine that) because they couldn't get the bridge out to the plane. After 45 minutes they decided to move the plane to another gate. This is the Edmonton airport we are talking about, its not like all the gates are full - they should have decided that after 10 minutes.
Thirty minute flight to Calgary, so barely enough time to get snacks and a drink of water. The bonus of sitting in the very last row is they give you lots of extra snacks. Fiona our steward said they were for the African kids we'll meet but we all knew there was no way the snacks would make it all the way to Africa. They did, however, make it to Amsterdam.
Our two connections at Calgary and Amsterdam passed uneventfully with less than an hours wait at each airport. KLM had very nice planes - the Airbus with a two -four-two seating pattern. They appear to be quite new airplanes and yet come with cigarette disposal areas at the rear of the plane. Both KLM flights were absolutely freezing!
I got about an hour of sleep on the first flight - missing dinner, and then a couple of 45 minute to 1 hour naps on the second flight, each of which were about 8 hours long.
When we arrived in Africa it was already dark, so no views of the mountain. KLM does have a nose wheel camera so you can see the ground as you come into the airport - it was very cool!
We exited the plane and walked across the tarmac to the building - no problems with the "bridge"here as the rolling stairs seemed to work well. Passport control took only a few minutes and I had a chance to try out my Swahili. The lady processing my passport looked tired and not all that enthusiastic about her job at that moment. When I took back my passport I thanked her in Swahili - that got a look straight into my eyes and a big smile. As I've found when travelling, people really do seem to appreciate the attempt to speak their language and "thank you" is a word you get to use a lot.
Eventually all 7 of us on that plane got all our luggage (although M, Helen's and mine was off in a few minutes) and we headed off into the countryside.
It is a highly rural area and about 100m from the airport there was only blackness all around us. They drive on the left here and even though I was in the back middle seat of a 10 person van, I still found it a bit freaky to see the cars coming towards us on that side.
They have a lot of speed bumps, or perhaps, in keeping with the Kilimanjaro theme, speed mountains along the highway - these are the widest speed bumps I have ever seen and often seem to be in the middle of nowhere.
We came upon one very bad car MVC where a smallish car (Subaru Legacy sized) had crashed mostly head on into a semi - the police men were examining the wreckage with flashlights and all the responding vehicles were parked with their blinkers on. No flashing overhead lights - which really looks weird. The policemen were wearing reflective vests, but no one was directing traffic or anything like that. I'm not sure if there were any ambulances in sight as I'm not sure what the emergency vehicles looked light beyond blinking lights.
As I am writing this I can hear the morning call to prayer which was quite faint at first but is now getting louder - as if they called everyone and now they are actually praying over the loud speaker. Very cool, although if I am sleeping tomorrow morning when it occurs I might not think so.
We arrived just passed 2230 local time (1230h on Friday afternoon at home) 27 hours after I left home. We were greeted with some freshly squeezed juice - passion fruit and mango maybe?
I am in room eight tonight by myself. It has two twin beds, which are made up individually with blankets and then pushed together. The beds are hard - the only harder beds I have slept on were in Hong Kong. I took out my sleeping bag and slept on top of it for some extra padding. It didn't help much.
The air conditioning is a floor fan, which I promptly put on high. I woke up in the middle of the night and was cold, so had to get up and turn it off. While writing this morning I had it on low but that made me cold - weird as it is quite warm in the room My watch says it is 27 degrees in the room.
The bathroom has a flush toilet and since I am south of the equator I checked for rotational direction. It is clockwise, which may be due to the angle the water enters the toilet bowl. I was going to check in the shower last night but I couldn't figure out how to get hot water so had a pretty brief shower..
I slept for about 4 hours and have woken up at 0330, which is a frequent wake up time for me at home. Perhaps I have successfully made the time change.
Prayer is over now, I think I will have a snack as breakfast isn't until eight, and then start getting my gear packed for the mountain.
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